Sound:
I am a hardcore tone tweaker. I have a ton of gear and I am always experimenting with different preamp, power, and cab options. I currently own a Triple Rectofier, A Marshall DSL50, and a rack of tube preamps, modelers and tube power amps. All this searching for really just about 3 or 4 "perfect" sounds. I play Les Pauls ( a standard and a studio) and a Highway One strat. I received the MG15DFX as a christmas present and at first, I would not even open the box thinking it was not a serious piece of gear. But since it was a present, I started using it a little, to my extreme surprise, I was blown away at how good it sounded. Now the little MG goes everywhere I need to practice and even with all my tube rigs sitting in the same room, I often just sit down and plug into that to practice. For a long time, I thought, sure, it sounds good at 15 watts, but this series would never be good for a live situation. Then I was in a music store one day and plugged into a MG100HDFX and matching cab. Once again, I was completely blown away and how great this sounded. I was amazed. Suddenly, I felt like a fool having bought into the whole "if it isn't a tube amp, it is junk" philosiphy. Even worse, I have an custom tube amp on order to the tune of about 2 grand. The MG100HDFX sounds absolutely wonderful for the price. The CD input is perfect for plugging your electric/acoustic into if you have acoustic parts during your set which my band does. These things are great. Now, they might not have the projection and tube drive required for stadiums or arenas, but how many reviewers out there, or those reading reviews are playing arenas? The important thing is if the amp sounds good for your needs, at your volume level, for your audience. This amp is an A+ for all of these requirements for me. The only possible improvement would be the cabinet and speakers, but you would have to study very close and find a speaker that match the same frequency response - in other words, don't play this head through Vintage 30s and think it will sound better. It likely will not. I think the MG speakers are relatively flat in thier response and most of the EQ is in the head itself, so higher quality speakers with the same response would be the ticket. Like Eminence man o wars or maybe tonkers? Anyway, this amp is righteous, and if you a texas blues man looking for some stellar SRV style tone, to me, this rig sounds better than a Fender with a tube screamer in front of it. The onboard reverb also sounds way better than my Boss RV-5. Love it. I was a fool to overlook the MG series as merely a "beginner" series of amps for so long. I will own one soon. THis is the best soundig solid state amp for tone, projection, and delievery I have ever played through. The only current production solid state head in the same ball park that I am aware of to to a comparison on would be the new Randall G3 series and in the first 10 seconds the Marshall wins because the Randall emits so much noise it is not usable. The Marshall is very quiet except for when you go to very, very high gain levels, and even then, it emits less than half of the noise the Randall does.
Feature:
Features galore. CD in Jack is killer, as mentioned, especially for plugging in your electric acoustic, or for running a second guitar in through an offboard preamp. Also great for plugging in a metronome for practice. The emulated out is cool, but actually sounds a little muddy to my ears, but not bad. The amp sounds so good at reasonable volume levels out of the matching cab, I would probably just mic the cab instead of using the direct outs, but direct outs are always handy. Great to have a headphone jack on an amp. A desireble feature for the married man who tends to irritate the wife with squealing pinch harmonics constantly.
Ease of Use:
Very easy to use, the only thing that would make it more "perfect" would be to make the "modes" footswitchable as well, like from Clean to Crunch on channel 1. The DSL also suffers from this shortcoming. If this is the magic amp for you though, it might be worth having it professionally modified to have these footswitchable.
Quality:
QUality appears to be solid, but I have not abused these things for years to create on objective opinion. The fact that it uses power ICs instead of tubes lends itself to much higher durability by design alone. Plus, maintenence is ZERO except for maybe a few scratchy pots every 5 years or so?
Value:
Sounds good at a fraction of the cost of any tube amps and alot of solid state amps.
Manufacturer Support:
No real opinion, though I have contacted Marshall for technical questions in the past and was happy.
The Wow Factor:
Black and Gold, standard Marshall looks. Good to Go.
Overall:
Love it. Ample Power, decent delivery (great delivery with medium and low gain) Awesome.

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"Giggable amp, not a tuber."

Sound:
It's one of the best sounding transistor amps. I have many amps to compare and if you use a healthy professional guitar you will get giggable sounds from this amp without using a pedal. Depending on the pickups in the guitar I can get country twang/surfin' sounds. If I use a double humbucker I get a real healthy rock with plenty of full tone, plenty of bass, mid and treble,
however to me the amp sounds best with the bass and mid all the way up and the treble all the way off. It's got a fuzzy/buzzy distortion if you turn the gain and treble up too much but if you keep it just barely up on gain it sounds very good. My rating is for transistor amps, not comparing it to tube amps, there isn't a comparison to tube amps they sound quite different. It's a very good sounding amp that will get by very well with the audience however it won't fool the tube guru, but I always wondered why the big mouths out there aren't working somewhere.
Feature:
Channel switching with a foot pedal and enough built in effects to make it sound passable for gigging, which for a transistor amp is excellent.
Quality:
The fan/heat sink module looks like it came out of a computer. And I have always had those fans go bad on me in computers.
They sure as heck could have put that transistor on a bigger heat sink and leave out the fan that if it quits the heat sink is sealed inside the amp so no air flow! I took the amp out and put it in an old Marshall head and turned the heat sink one rotation so if the fan quits the air flow will go UP and hopefully be enough to keep things stable. Now the amp is completely open on top and doesn't get hot. There goes any warranty tho. What's really cool is the amp will fit in the bottom of a Plexi style Marshall head because the transformer is mostly inside the amp not hanging down like most transistor amps. I found an old long box 30" Marshall head (empty) and it fit perfecly.
Value:
I think they cost $100 too much compared to other brands. If you must use a transistor head, try them all and see which one you like. But you must play them against a loud backup like a band situation to really know what an amp sounds like. There really is no way to "try out" an amp in a store.
Manufacturer Support:
Don't know.
The Wow Factor:
It's a usable transistor amp, as good or better as any other. If you know how to MAKE your setup sound decent with a proven sounding guitar and a pedal setup you know how to use, you can gig with this amp.
Overall:
I will use it until it blows and then not buy one again, just because I have quite a few other amps already.

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